Hunters Keep Coming To My House - Chapter 160

Chapter 160

“.….”

“.….”

“Why were you staring?”

“…Nothing.”

Jung Tae-il had something to say to me as he quickly turned his face away. Whatever he was thinking, it seemed rather impure.

I approached Jung Tae-il with a nod.

“Geez, if you turn your head like that, people will misunderstand.”

“…About what?”

“Even though I might look a bit shabby right now… Did you curse inwardly? Or did you have any bad thoughts?”

Jung Tae-il widened his eyes without answering, then quickly grimaced and let out a deep sigh. It was a sigh that strongly conveyed the feeling of ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

Thanks to that, I found myself puffing out my lips alone. It was a joke, but it felt like I had caught an unwanted companion.

‘…Just wore clothes I could grab quickly.’

Though I threw on my worn-out tracksuit casually, was it that bad? It was just comfortable clothing I put on hastily with the thought of checking and rushing out.

Seeing as my peers had all tried on famous brands’ Adidas tracksuits, I couldn’t help but stick out my lips a bit more. It was an expensive tracksuit bought with saved-up money to avoid falling behind in fashion. Despite the knees poking out and the sleeves worn, I was not going to turn my head just because of clothes.

“Um… being picky, huh? Even though you’re in pain, you’re still taking care of clothes?”

Muttering earnestly for Jung Tae-il to hear, I lightly tapped the innocent ground with my toe. Then I heard Jung Tae-il’s faint laughter.

Is he laughing now? Staring at him with an expression that questioned this, Jung Tae-il looked at me with his usual poker face, as if he hadn’t laughed at all.

As thoughts of wanting to punch him and the realization that he was still a patient fought fiercely within me, Jung Tae-il’s voice came through.

“By the way, haven’t you heard anything from the Overflow yet?”

“Oh, wait a moment. Let me check. I put my phone in the inventory because I was flying here.”

“……”

“Could you not look at me like that? Even if it can be automatically restored, it would still be heartbreaking if the screen went out.”

“…Okay.”

It wasn’t a snappy response, but it came out unconsciously. Seeing Jung Tae-il awkwardly squinting with one eye, I hadn’t intended for it to be like that at all.

Still, well, seeing Jung Tae-il looking awkward because of me somehow eased my mind. I stared at Jung Tae-il for a moment, then smirked and took out my phone from the inventory.

When I turned it on, a bright screen greeted me along with numerous piled-up messages.

“…Why did I receive so many messages?”

Surely, except for the advertising texts, there hadn’t been a single message on my phone before.

Feeling bewildered, I stared blankly at the phone screen, and Jung Tae-il seemed to sense the seriousness as he got up and approached me.

Then, standing abruptly behind me, Jung Tae-il leaned over and tapped my phone screen with his large hand. Thanks to that, my posture became awkward. Jung Tae-il had turned into a figure of back-hugging me, so to speak.

“Um, Mr. Tae-il?”

“Shouldn’t we check the messages first?”

“Oh, right.”

Before I could even say that there was no need for such a posture, I mechanically followed Jung Tae-il’s instruction and checked the messages among the many contacts, as he suggested.

Since it was more important to see why there were so many messages than to maintain this posture for some reason, I pressed the first message that came up.

[This is from the Overflow. Please let us know when you’re available, and we’ll send the potions and items you requested. We’ll personally deliver them.]

It was a response to the message I had sent to the Overflow before. Initially, I had tried to contact Yoo Seol-ah, the healer at the Overflow, directly, but Jung Tae-il stopped me.

She would probably be occupied with other gates by now, so it would be faster to contact the administrative side of the Overflow, he had explained.

“Their response is really fast. It feels like it hasn’t even been a day since I sent the message.”

“It probably has been a day.”

“Still, it’s good news. I should reply quickly.”

I quickly replied with a possible time frame and then checked another message.

“Seung-hoo sent a lot… Ah, Soo-hee also sent… and Ellie and Anna too… Sent? And why did Yoon-soo send so many?”

By this point, unease settled in. It seemed Jung Tae-il felt the same.

He didn’t even have time to wait, immediately opening the message sent by Kang Yoon-soo. And after reading its contents, we couldn’t speak for a long time.

[Yeon-oh, it’s been a while since I contacted you, and I’m sorry to bring you this news. But I feel like Yeon-oh should know, so I’m texting you in a hurry.

There’s a phenomenon of gold occurring in the skies of Seoul right now. Do you have any information about this?

And I have more to discuss about this, so I’d like to meet as soon as you check the message. I hope we can meet face to face and talk about it.]

The message was very long. However, I couldn’t even catch my breath until I read the last period. No, I couldn’t even breathe.

“…It’s outside the gate.”

Where Kang Yoon-soo was, it was outside the gate. So, that meant it was an environment where such bizarre things couldn’t happen.

But why on earth…

Kang Yoon-soo was not the type of person to joke about such serious matters, so I turned my head sharply with a grimace. Then I noticed Jung Tae-il, with a seriously stiff expression, unable to turn his gaze away from the phone screen.

‘Wait a moment.’

Was he looking at the phone screen?

I glanced back at Jung Tae-il’s gaze. At first glance, it seemed like he was looking at the phone screen, but what he was truly focusing on was beyond that…

“…Arvani?”

Kyuuuu!

It was Arvani.

At that realization, a large blue circle formed under me and Jung Tae-il’s feet.

Familiar, tingling mana. It was undoubtedly Arvani’s mana. He furrowed his brows, then raised his tail high and let out a roar.

Kyaaah!

At that moment…

Boom!

The blue mana began to envelop our bodies.

* * *

Meanwhile, at the same time, in the office of Janwol.

“…Hah.”

Kang Yoon-soo let out a deep sigh. Murmuring that he felt like there had been a similar situation before, he scanned the occupants of his study, which now included Kim Chok, Guinza, Yoo Soo-hee, Han Seung-hoo, and finally…Yoo Seol-ah.

He didn’t quite understand why people from the Overflow could confidently enter this place, but given the circumstances, Kang Yoon-soo decided to simply move on after saying one thing.

“It seems like this place has become the venue for a meeting.”

Of course, not a single person paid attention to his words.

However, the tense silence that had settled due to the presence of various people was enough to break the ice.

“I’ve come to the person who probably knows the most about this situation, Kang Yoon-soo.”

“So, Mr. Kim Chok. Why me?”

“Oh, come on, don’t you know the most about this area? You’ve been living here, muttering to yourself, all this time.”

“Seol-ah…”

“If my brother doesn’t know, who else would?”

Ugh. Kang Yoon-soo sighed deeply again, placing his hand on his forehead. As Seung-hoo had said, if he didn’t know, there would be no one else in the Republic of Korea who knew about this situation.

He had been dealing with matters related to mana professionally, which was why everyone had come to him.

While the lower-level hunters might not have felt it, the people gathered here were at least A-level hunters. In other words, they were high-level hunters and individuals sensitive to mana.

They felt the increasing concentration of mana as gold appeared in the sky and rushed here.

Knowing that… Kang Yoon-soo couldn’t bring himself to say anything else.

“…Right. Everyone probably knows why they’ve come to me, but I don’t know anything about this situation. And I don’t know why the concentration of mana has suddenly increased like this…”

Kang Yoon-soo, who had been explaining things in an easy-to-understand manner, suddenly stopped speaking. While he didn’t understand the situation with gold appearing in the sky, he had experienced moments when the concentration of mana had surged rapidly.

Right now… at Yeon-oh’s gate.

He knew it was dangerous even before the gate was created, but the mana he faced was beyond his imagination.

The current mana flowing through gold was like a baby’s compared to it.

Kang Yoon-soo had experienced it.

‘…What on earth is Yeon-oh?’

As questions piled up in Kang Yoon-soo’s mind…

Boom!

With a blue light, two figures appeared on the table.